One of my parkour friends posted a video today of him doing a big jump over the water at the Seattle Waterfront. Someone commented on the video, asking "why he would do this," "what he was thinking," "what is the payoff in taking risks like that?" and that this was "stupid for someone with so much going for them."

These are things any traceur (someone who trains parkour) has heard before, and typically knows how to respond to. But there was something else in this woman's rant that echoed something I've been thinking a lot about lately.

She was talking about risk, but she doesn't quite understand what "risk" really is.

I want to highlight the difference between "risk" and "consequences." People often think of the terms as interchangeable, but they're two very different things. And once the distinction is clear, it will help you understand why [my friend] did what he did.

Risk is, essentially, the chances of a thing happening. Saying something "is risky" means the chances of failure are high. In this case, the "risk" is the chance of falling.

Consequences are what happens as a result. In this example, bouncing off the wall and falling into the water.

Separating Risk from Consequence enables us to do several things:

1) Understand professional "extreme" athletes. The risk of [my friend] falling is actually very low. He has trained for years, he is hyper-aware of his abilities and limits, is very strong, has jumped farther distances before, and is responsible enough to know when to say "not today."

2) Evaluate the pay-off of taking a risk. The consequences of [my friend] falling is actually not that severe either. Assuming he protects his head (which is a pretty safe assumption, given the positioning of his hands and feet), he would fall into the water. Even an uncontrolled fall of that distance into water is not particularly threatening. He is a strong swimmer, which means he could get to the surface, breathe, and tread water until he and his friends figure out how to get him out of the water.

So this, in reality, is a low-risk, moderate-consequence situation. Breaking it down like this helps us understand the difference between this situation and a high-risk, high-consequence situation (for example, an untrained person doing a deep sea scuba dive into a shipwreck).

Hopefully, this helps further clarify Brian and his motivations.

This same rationale applies to startups, business, and life, too. Some people (employees at big companies and mothers, for example) think working for a startup is "risky." That's true! The chances of any given startup failing are pretty huge.

But what are the consequences of a startup failing? You learn a ton. Your responsibilities jump years ahead of where they'd be if you were working for a large company for the same amount of time. You get used to doing more with less.

You actually end up being more hirable.

So next time you look at something and sense potential danger, take a moment and think.

Are you worried about the risk? Or the consequences?

***

The picture is another from my backflip collection. I was in Washington DC visiting a friend. We were sitting on a bench on the National Mall, I glanced left, and my jaw dropped. The Washington Monument and the clouds were lit beautifully. So my friend took this picture, which is definitely one of my favorites.

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Great article. More validation for my hard work! I like how you use consequences as a positive notion, when too often it is only negative. I am a big proponent of experiential learning, so definitely like this.

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This is a post from a prior blog of mine. Still, I feel that posting it here might prover useful. Mindfulness meditation teaches us to how to clear our mind that we might see how nuanced and ever changing things are.
The other day I was hanging out with some close friends. We decided that we would go to dinner at a Japanese restaurant in town, a personal favorite of mine. One of my friends was quite leery about the choice as he has not had very much foreign food that he has liked, especially Asian food. In fact we had gone places like this before where he had not liked his food and not only went hungry but then had to pay for another meal that he did like after we left. That being considered, this was a bit of a risky choice for him. Yet, despite the fact that he has had bad experiences before he liked what he ordered quite a bit. His expectations, pleasantly, were not satisfied.

This morning I decided that I would wake up and do Ashtanga Yoga to a lengthy YouTube video. I had done this practice before and had barely been able to do the poses, being out of breath and dripping with sweat the whole time. As a little background, Ashtanga Yoga is what so called Strength Yoga is based off of, and is an incredibly physically demanding style. It is one that I am interested in despite my lack of physical prowess though, so I thought I would try it again. Leery, I step onto the mat and a pleasantly surprised by my stamina and strength. I was expecting to barely get into it since I haven't done yoga in about a month, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It is quite easy to look at a situation that contains risk and shun it. This morning's practice could have been a harsh reminder of my limits. Based on my past practice and the fact that I haven't practiced yoga much lately it very well could have gone that way. My friend's meal could have been abrasive to his palate causing him to be out the price of two meals instead of one, as has happened before. Yet, we both walked away from these experiences satisfied.

Now, this is not necessarily what happens when you take a risk. In fact, you'll feel the sting of the times that your risks don't pay off far more than the benefits of when a risk pays out. Yet, by getting that stupid little voice out of my head that was saying "you aren't strong or flexible enough for the style," I had a good experience. I divorced myself from an expectation that in this case would have lead me to an incorrect conclusion.

My friend is a picky eater. He knows that he doesn't like certain foods and avoids them. Yet, he got that little voice that said "all new foods are bad" out of his head and as well had a good experience. His experience has taught him his preferences, but at the same time his experience does not bar him from trying new things. Instead, it tempers his encounters with new things, making the experience a better one.